Sukkot, the festival of Booths or Tabernacles, is more than just remembering Israel had to live in tents between deliverance from Egypt and entrance into the Promised Land. Part of preparing to live in God’s presence is learning how to keep ourselves “clean” and holy — set apart from the evil of the world while in the world — so that we can prepare for a prophesied time when God’s people will teach the nations.
Tag: Abram/Abraham
This section of Genesis introduces us to Abraham and his family. We start to see how God communicates His revelation through Abraham’s family (not just the men, but the women as well). We also rediscover how God calls, trains and corrects those He longs to call His sons and daughters.
Before studying the life of Yosef (Joseph), we look back at some of what we have learned about God and His interaction with some of His notable people. The Flood and the Tower of Babel were the two most monumental events in mankind’s history. Everything we experience today is the result of these two events.
Ya’akov (Jacob) is sent away to find a wife and finds God first at the bottom of a ladder to Heaven. Then he finds Rachel and ends up with her sister and two slave women. There seems to be something prophetic about Rachel.
After Sarah’s death Abraham had other children as well and we learn how his estate was divided up between his heirs. We also learn how Yiskhak (Isaac) deals with his status as a wealthy patriarch in a hostile land and how his two sons start fighting over Yiskhak’s estate before they are born and continue fighting over it when they are adults. The fight appears to end with Esau “despising” his birthright. But does this really end the dispute?
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Yitskhak meets his wife (Genesis 24)
We learn about the Near Eastern customs of how to find a wife for a prominent family. From Abraham’s request to Rivka’s acceptance, Isaac is not a part of this story until the very end when Isaac greets Rivka as acknowledges her as the wife God has chosen for him.
The events around Sarah’s death are not mentioned simply as a marker of time. She was a prominent person in her own right. Her Biblical biography is the only one of a woman that mentions her age at the time of her death as well as the elaborate negotiations surrounding the location of her final repose. The negotiations for her burial place have implications into the present day.